An Abridged History of Controversial Video Games

With the recent release of Modern Warfare 2 and the controversy surrounding its already infamous “No Russian” mission, I have decided to put together a list of games that have, in the past, caused uproar with the public and the press. You’ll find a few titles below with which you may be very familiar and a couple of titles that may not have ever shown up on your gamer radar.

The first title is the grandfather of controversial pixelated menaces. It was titled Death Race, and was based on the 1976 movie starring David Carradine. This movie was recently remade starring Jason Statham. (Don’t waste your time; both movies are horrible.) Death Race was a very simplistic game, with block-like, Atari like graphics that were caveman like compared to today’s standards of high resolution, high definition graphics. The goal of the game was to drive around splattering little stick man like enemies and to dodge on screen obstacles that would cause your super sleek awesome death car to explode in all of its two-dimensional black-and-white glory. When you drove your cute little car over one of the enemies, a little gravestone would appear on the screen. Well, boys and girls, the public just couldn’t handle that sort of graphic violence back in 1976. People freaked out over this arcade game, and protested in great numbers, some even going so far as to actually light arcade units on fire in parking lots while protesting. Thank you, Death Race, for paving the way (pun intended) for future video game homicide.

Fast-forward to 1992 and up pops a game by the name of Mortal Kombat. I was just the tender age of nine at the time, and all I can remember is how badly I wanted to uppercut a digital ninja into a pit full of spikes, and watch blood rain down like New Year’s Eve confetti. The topic of this game’s blood-filled fighting premise covered the news channels for what seemed like years; and of course, this just caused the popularity and the sales of the game to skyrocket. Since that time, Mortal Kombat has spawned countless sequels that have grown increasingly more violent and realistic. I would like to thank Mortal Kombat for getting me in trouble on the playground as a kid for uppercutting kids down the slide. (Thank you very much.) The first time I rented it, my parents had of course, seen all of the news coverage, and it made them a bit wary. Once I began playing it, however, my dad looked at me, looked at the game, and said, “I don’t see what all this uproar is about.” So, much Mortal Kombat was played.

A short year later, another classic game that caused everyone to just flip their conservative wigs: Doom. Doom is a first-person shooter in which you’d slaughter demons from hell with shotguns, pistols, chain guns, and tons of other amazingly violent weapons. BFG 9000, anyone? What? Yeah. (Name-dropping there.) The mistake the publishers of this game made was pissing off conservatives, as well as the media. Suddenly, parents were tossing out computers on which their children played and taking little Timmy and Junior to church on Sundays. Once again, the sales of this game skyrocketed, largely due to the bad press. I, personally, didn’t see any problem with destroying demons. Now, if one had been rolling around blowing up puppies and March of Dime kids, I could see the issue parents and church-goers were fighting about, and I could agree with them. What’s the problem? They’re evil. You’ve got a big f*ckin’ gun. Bang. Dead demon. Better yet, what if it had been called “Kill Zombie Jesus”? What then? The people would have imploded before the game was ever released. Giving games satanic themes will always be popular because it sells. And now it’s becoming more popular, given the whole 2012 hoopla these days. Just deal with it.

Finally, a game that pretty much no one knows about; but caused Muslims, Christians, politicians, and regular folk alike to just pass out in public for no good reason. The website www.somethingawful.com released a game on its site for download called Muslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide. The title alone says it all: it was a top-down shooter in which you kill…well…you kill Muslims. The Muslim community had simultaneous seizures and their beards fell off instantly when this game was released. I can understand why an entire population of people can get upset over a game like this. I really can. But, knowing the content of somethingawful, and knowing the type of humor that it is, I can say this much: they created this game to make waves. I would also bet that it was a bit of a political statement, as well. In 2008, and today, in 2010, what are we doing? We’re in the Middle East. Killing Muslims. Why? The American public has forgotten. So a game was released that caused an uproar, made people pay attention to something, and just made some folks think that somethingawful was an abomination and inhumane. I can’t help but laugh at the tongue-in-cheek humor of the game. The game is no longer available on the site, but can be downloaded via the Internet. Try looking it up on a torrent. I know you will, anyway.

Now, I know some of you will say that I missed some games, or that my opinion is off; these, however, are the games I remember making some noise. Except for that Death Race game; I didn’t even know that game existed until I started research for this article. I know some of you will say, “Oh, what about GTA and the Hot Coffee thing?” And I don’t disagree. That game caused a ruckus. But these are the games that stand out to me. Video games create a fantasy world in which we destroy, build, kill, create, and just get away from the outside world. Video games don’t cause kids to shoot their classmates. Movies don’t cause kids to shoot their classmates. If you research any events in which video games were blamed for violence, you’ll see that the children that committed these monstrous acts were disturbed from the start. The controversy surrounding these games only makes the buzz for them even louder. More people buy them. More people play them, and the publishers make millions more because of the press. I’m sure they appreciate the media plugging their game. It’s free advertisement, and that’s the best kind you can get.